Rimmer Directive 217 States, Just As Clearly, 'No Chance, You Metal Bastard.'
We finished our household rewatch of Community! It's still such a good show, and Jeff/Annie still has such a hold on my heart. Put a cynic and an idealist in the same room, have the cynic glance at the idealist with a little fond smile, and I will have an OTP for life.
I love Jeff Winger so much. Earlier in this rewatch, I said he might be 'ten favourite characters of all time' material; now that I've finished it, I have to wonder whether he's actually a candidate for my all-time favourite character from any medium. This charming, self-obsessed, intensely loving disaster of a human being, who wants to be a cool loner but is absolutely terrified of abandonment.
The 'rewatch comforting, familiar sitcoms' strategy seems to be a good one for coping with lockdown, so we're following Community with Red Dwarf!
Rimmer is, inevitably, my favourite Red Dwarf character. Put any cast in front of me and watch me make a beeline for the worst person in it.
Rimmer actually sort of reminds me of Scriabin, in some aspects. Angry and petty and insecure. Completely powerless, able to see and hear the world but unable to interact with it. Isolated; there are almost no people he can speak to, and he doesn't get along with them at all, but it would be worse to be alone.
The similarities particularly struck me in 'Bodyswap'. Psychologically needling Lister until he agrees to swap bodies, then abusing the chance!
If Rimmer and Scriabin ever somehow met, they would absolutely loathe each other.
Writing fanfiction about Scriabin recently has been a blast; I'd forgotten how much fun it is to write a character who's just the absolute goddamn worst at all times. I think Arnold Rimmer might be the first 'absolute goddamn worst' character I ever developed a fondness for; Red Dwarf is the first television series I remember enjoying, after all. I'm fairly sure I loved Red Dwarf before I loved Pokémon, even though a lot of the jokes probably went over my head when I was a kid.
The end of 'Terrorform' genuinely breaks my heart a little. Everyone being uncharacteristically nice to Rimmer helps to revive his long-dead sense of self-worth, and then he realises they were just doing it to save their skins and they really do think he's a git! I mean, to be fair, they think that because he is a git, but it's still slightly tragic.
Of course, even though Rimmer and Lister don't get along, there's still a strange intimacy between them. They're isolated together; they're each the other's only form of human contact. I was struck by Rimmer's genuine panic when he finds Lister unconscious in 'Confidence and Paranoia', and by Lister speaking at Rimmer's trial in 'Justice':
Kryten: Would you describe the accused as a friend?
Lister: No, I'd describe the accused as a git.
Kryten: Who would you say, then, is the person who thinks of him most fondly?
Lister: (pause) I do.
'Quarantine' is an extremely weird episode to watch in lockdown. When I first saw it, as a child, the idea of being isolated together for twelve whole weeks to prevent potential infection seemed ludicrous.
When I first saw 'Demons and Angels' as a child, meanwhile, it absolutely terrified me. Lister being remote-controlled into doing terrible things was really upsetting! I seem better able to handle it now, fortunately.
I'd thought Scrubs was the first sitcom I ever watched without audience laughter; I'd forgotten that series seven of Red Dwarf dropped the studio audience. At the time, it seemed like a bizarre decision. Looking back, I think series seven of Red Dwarf was ahead of its time. It still feels strangely silent when you've just blasted through the six series preceding it, though.
Also: not enough Rimmer. What a great, awful character.
My teenage efforts at Red Dwarf fanfiction have been lost forever, which is perhaps for the best, but maybe I should try writing some now.
WAIT, NO, I just managed to dig the Lister/Rimmer fic I wrote when I was fourteen out of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine! And it's SO BAD. It's so bad! It's awful! I can barely bring myself to look at it. But it's still a part of my writing history, so I'm glad I was able to rescue it.
...oh, wow. For easy backup purposes, I have a copy of every fic I've ever written stored in a single Word document that I occasionally e-mail to myself. I just pasted this recovered Red Dwarf fic into the master document, and the wordcount now stands at 1,000,319. I guess I've written over a million words of fiction!
It's a nice time to hit the 'million words' milestone, actually. I started writing fanfiction in October of 2000, so this year will be my twentieth anniversary.
Five hundred of those million words are the word 'blood' or 'bleeding'.
I love Jeff Winger so much. Earlier in this rewatch, I said he might be 'ten favourite characters of all time' material; now that I've finished it, I have to wonder whether he's actually a candidate for my all-time favourite character from any medium. This charming, self-obsessed, intensely loving disaster of a human being, who wants to be a cool loner but is absolutely terrified of abandonment.
The 'rewatch comforting, familiar sitcoms' strategy seems to be a good one for coping with lockdown, so we're following Community with Red Dwarf!
Rimmer is, inevitably, my favourite Red Dwarf character. Put any cast in front of me and watch me make a beeline for the worst person in it.
Rimmer actually sort of reminds me of Scriabin, in some aspects. Angry and petty and insecure. Completely powerless, able to see and hear the world but unable to interact with it. Isolated; there are almost no people he can speak to, and he doesn't get along with them at all, but it would be worse to be alone.
The similarities particularly struck me in 'Bodyswap'. Psychologically needling Lister until he agrees to swap bodies, then abusing the chance!
If Rimmer and Scriabin ever somehow met, they would absolutely loathe each other.
Writing fanfiction about Scriabin recently has been a blast; I'd forgotten how much fun it is to write a character who's just the absolute goddamn worst at all times. I think Arnold Rimmer might be the first 'absolute goddamn worst' character I ever developed a fondness for; Red Dwarf is the first television series I remember enjoying, after all. I'm fairly sure I loved Red Dwarf before I loved Pokémon, even though a lot of the jokes probably went over my head when I was a kid.
The end of 'Terrorform' genuinely breaks my heart a little. Everyone being uncharacteristically nice to Rimmer helps to revive his long-dead sense of self-worth, and then he realises they were just doing it to save their skins and they really do think he's a git! I mean, to be fair, they think that because he is a git, but it's still slightly tragic.
Of course, even though Rimmer and Lister don't get along, there's still a strange intimacy between them. They're isolated together; they're each the other's only form of human contact. I was struck by Rimmer's genuine panic when he finds Lister unconscious in 'Confidence and Paranoia', and by Lister speaking at Rimmer's trial in 'Justice':
Kryten: Would you describe the accused as a friend?
Lister: No, I'd describe the accused as a git.
Kryten: Who would you say, then, is the person who thinks of him most fondly?
Lister: (pause) I do.
'Quarantine' is an extremely weird episode to watch in lockdown. When I first saw it, as a child, the idea of being isolated together for twelve whole weeks to prevent potential infection seemed ludicrous.
When I first saw 'Demons and Angels' as a child, meanwhile, it absolutely terrified me. Lister being remote-controlled into doing terrible things was really upsetting! I seem better able to handle it now, fortunately.
I'd thought Scrubs was the first sitcom I ever watched without audience laughter; I'd forgotten that series seven of Red Dwarf dropped the studio audience. At the time, it seemed like a bizarre decision. Looking back, I think series seven of Red Dwarf was ahead of its time. It still feels strangely silent when you've just blasted through the six series preceding it, though.
Also: not enough Rimmer. What a great, awful character.
My teenage efforts at Red Dwarf fanfiction have been lost forever, which is perhaps for the best, but maybe I should try writing some now.
WAIT, NO, I just managed to dig the Lister/Rimmer fic I wrote when I was fourteen out of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine! And it's SO BAD. It's so bad! It's awful! I can barely bring myself to look at it. But it's still a part of my writing history, so I'm glad I was able to rescue it.
...oh, wow. For easy backup purposes, I have a copy of every fic I've ever written stored in a single Word document that I occasionally e-mail to myself. I just pasted this recovered Red Dwarf fic into the master document, and the wordcount now stands at 1,000,319. I guess I've written over a million words of fiction!
It's a nice time to hit the 'million words' milestone, actually. I started writing fanfiction in October of 2000, so this year will be my twentieth anniversary.
Five hundred of those million words are the word 'blood' or 'bleeding'.